


Scotch and Solace

by Ellera



Category: Mass Effect
Genre: A really great chair, Friendship, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-25
Updated: 2015-06-25
Packaged: 2018-04-06 01:32:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,920
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4202886
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ellera/pseuds/Ellera
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Zaeed joins the crew of the Normandy and almost instantly manages to piss off Jack. But sometimes shared experiences and the influence of a certain commanding officer can challenge first impressions.</p>
<p>Rated M for language and the deaths of a few children.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Scotch and Solace

**Author's Note:**

> This work began life as part of an alphabet fic I was going to try to write--I randomly generated some words for ideas and "chair" came up. It was going to stop at the first break. However, I was having way too much fun writing Zaeed and new things just kept suggesting themselves.

All things considered, the _Normandy_ was not a half-bad boat. Zaeed tucked one hand behind his neck, the other cradling a glass of his favorite scotch, and reclined his chair back as far as it would go. Any ship that had a bar as well-stocked as this one was more than alright, in his estimation. Unfortunately, that bar came with a side of an extremely talkative little thief who seemed to know more than she should about him. He’d only been aboard a day and a half and he had already decided he didn’t like her. Never trust a woman who wouldn’t show her goddamn face. He’d almost given up on being able to enjoy a drink in peace, but earlier in the mess hall, one of the engineers—the pretty one, no idea if she was Daniels or Donnelly—had clued him in to the fact that the starboard observation deck was almost always unoccupied. Zaeed had poured himself a drink, managed to escape a conversation with Kasumi, and crossed the corridor to the blissfully empty observation deck. There were a pair of chairs tucked into the corner, and as he had settled into one, he realized it was one of the most comfortable goddamn chairs he’d ever sat in. Cerberus might hire blithering idiots for their troops, but at least they knew how to outfit a ship.

He closed his eyes and sipped at the scotch, savoring the smoky, peaty taste of an honest-to-God, Earth-produced alcohol. He’d tried some of the new synthetics, even an asari version he’d found on Illium a few years back, and nothing measured up to the real thing. Good scotch, a comfortable chair, the promise of revenge and plenty to kill, and a goddamn beautiful paycheck. What more could a man ask for? He even had his own space down on the engineering deck where no one bothered him. No one, except Shepard. She’d come by to chat after he had gotten his things settled, and again this morning. Kasumi had assured him amidst her endless chatter that that was just something Shepard did, checking in with her entire team every day. Well, he had put up with far more bullshit for far less money than what Cerberus was paying him. He could handle talking to a pretty young woman for a few minutes every day, especially since she actually seemed willing to listen to his old stories, and even share a few of her own. He’d looked up extranet footage of her in action against the geth, and the woman was a goddamn killing machine, handling her assault rifle with a proficiency that was sort of beautiful. Yeah, he could see himself almost enjoying this mission. Especially the moment when he got to put a bullet between Vido Santiago’s eyes.

“Hey! Old man. What the fuck are you doing?”

Caught up in his thoughts, Zaeed hadn’t heard the door open, which had him cursing himself. A man who wasn’t paying attention was a dead man. He relaxed the hand that had gone for a pistol that wasn’t there and regarded his visitor. She was so heavily tattooed that it took him a second to realize that the only thing she wore from the waist up was a set of thin leather straps across her tits. Her head was shaved, and her huge eyes were staring lasers at him. Tiny thing, to be so aggressive. “Drinking some fine scotch and enjoying the goddamn view. Who the hell are you?”

She ignored the question. “You’re in my chair.”

“Don’t see your name on it. That makes it fair game, don’t it? Plenty of other chairs on this boat.”

She took a step forward. “I don’t know who you think you are, but everyone knows that that is my. Fucking. Chair.”

“Well, it’s my ass in it, so I think that makes it my chair right now. You’re welcome to it when I’m done.” He grinned at her, well aware that the scars on the right side of his face made his smile rather sinister, even if it was lopsided. Her eyes narrowed.

“Look, old man, I’m gonna spell it out for you. I’m not real good with people. I come up here to get out of that shithole of a subdeck, and because it’s quiet. Not even the girl scout comes in here. This is my space. So I suggest you take that ass back to wherever it came from, cause I’m done talking.” She took another step forward and her hands glowed faintly blue.

Zaeed barked a laugh. “So you’re the crazy biotic. Jack, right?” She didn’t answer, but the blue glow intensified. He leaned forward. “Gonna lift me up in the air by my ankle? I’ve faced down more biotics than I can count, even a krogan once. Killed most of ‘em, too. You don’t scare me, girlie.”

Jack continued to stare at him for a few more seconds, then the biotic glow dissipated and she turned away with a growl of disgust. “Fuck you. This isn’t worth my time.” The door hissed behind her as she stalked out.

Zaeed settled back in the chair, closing his eyes again. He couldn’t really fault her for being angry. It was a goddamn wonderful chair.

 

\----------

 

Over the next few weeks, Zaeed continued to occupy the starboard lounge chair whenever he could. He rarely went on ground missions, which didn’t bother him too much. Especially after listening to Vakarian recount what happened aboard that Collector ship. Shepard preferred to bring the turian and a biotic to balance out her squad, and that biotic usually happened to be Jack. She would come back to the ship, keyed up and spoiling to continue the fight, and there he would be, sitting in her chair with scotch in hand. She’d yell, threaten him, but always eventually left. It became a sort of game to him, seeing how far he could provoke her. She seemed unwilling to resort to actual violence, but her threats got progressively more detailed.

And then they came to Pragia.

He had just finished reassembling his Vindicator when Shepard knocked on the hold door. “It’s open.”

The door slid open and she strode in. She had a soldier’s walk, quick and precise. “Hey, Zaeed. Jack and I are going down to the planet, and I want you on the ground team.”

Well, color him goddamn surprised. “Can’t say I’m not happy to see some action, but I thought you and Vakarian were attached at the goddamn hip.”

She shifted slightly, looking a bit uncomfortable. “I’m not sure what’s going on with him, but he’s been…distracted lately, making mistakes I’ve never seen him make. I want to give him a break, let him clear his head. And since I prefer to have a sniper at my six, you’re on.” She gave him a wicked grin. “Besides, we’re gonna go plant a big-ass bomb and blow shit up.”

“Sounds like my kind of party.”

“I was hoping you’d say that. Suit up. Shuttle leaves in 2 hours.”

 

\----------

 

Zaeed Massani had seen some shit. He’d even done plenty of shit—you didn’t get to be an old merc in this galaxy by being squeamish about a job. But he drew the line at kids. As the squad explored the abandoned Teltin facility, he could feel his bile rising and with it, his anger. Cerberus might be idiots at the bottom, but the top was as fucked up as they come. It was almost a relief to encounter the Blood Pack also searching the ruins. Sighting down the scope of his Viper, he imagined each exploding vorcha head to belong to the scientists that had run this place. Some things even he couldn’t ignore.

Jack’s face had frozen into a snarl as she fought, blasting away everything in her path. Seeing her power and fury unleashed, he was suddenly glad she hadn’t made good on any of her threats. He hadn’t been boasting _too_ much about facing down biotics, but he didn’t think he could have shrugged off a blow from her. _Mental note, Massani. Let her have the goddamn chair_.

When they finally reached her old cell, Zaeed waited out in the hall. He couldn’t listen to Jack recount her memories anymore. Not without dragging up his own ghosts.

_Zaeed was sixteen years old, and Jessie was eight. His sister was brilliant, fast and funny, always able to make him laugh. He loved her for it, and was fiercely protective of her. He had to be. Dad had left three days after Jessie was born and never came home again. Mum had told him he had to be the one to watch over his baby sister now, and he took it to heart._

_At first, Mum had drank herself to sleep almost every night. But when Jessie was six, she turned to pills and powders, grabbing at any new drug she could get her hands on. One day, the siblings had come home from school, and Mum told them to pack their things—they had to move to a different apartment. It ended up being a squalid, three-room place in the worst part of town. An endless parade of gruff, angry men came to their door looking for money. Zaeed always told Jessie to hide when the doorbell rang. Smart as she was, she never protested. She knew what was going on._

_It was ten days after Jessie’s eighth birthday, and the angry man didn’t bother with the doorbell this time. He simply hammered on the door until the cheap lock shorted out and muscled his way in. Jessie was watching the news, Mum was half-awake next to her, and Zaeed was at the tiny kitchen table doing his homework. When the door crashed open, Mum jerked alert. She reached under the couch and grabbed a pistol he hadn’t known was there. She screamed at the man to get the fuck out of her house, and the man yelled back at her to give him his money. He threatened to kill her children, and pointed his own gun at Zaeed, who closed his eyes. Someone shouted, “No!” and a gunshot echoed through the apartment._

_When he opened his eyes, he was surprised he wasn’t dead, but then he looked back over at Mum, and wished he was. The angry man wasn’t the one who had fired. Mum had, and Jessie had run to protect her older brother, just like he had protected her. But Mum had missed, and Jessie lay in a heap on the floor, a pool of blood around her. The man turned and fled. Zaeed ran to his sister. She had been larger than life, but now she looked so small._

The shooting had been ruled an accident, but Mum drove herself crazy with guilt. On the first anniversary of Jessie’s death, he had come home to find Mum had turned that pistol on herself, and then he was alone. Zaeed abandoned the house where his family had died, living on the streets and scavenging to survive. When humanity learned of the existence of other species, a whole wide galaxy to explore and start over, he knew he needed to get off of Earth. After a few years, he had saved and stolen enough to book a one-way ticket on a rickety shuttle to Omega. There, he started taking up freelance merc work, hiring himself out to whoever would pay him. He was twenty-four.

_It had started out as a simple enough job—he and another human merc had been hired as backup on a hit, one weapons dealer taking out another. But when the three of them arrived at the tiny apartment, somewhere in the maze of the Fumi District, it got complicated. The rival dealer hadn’t been prepared for a hit, and the apartment was virtually undefended. It was his home, not where he did business, and evidently he hadn’t expected anyone to be able to find it. The squad took out the two bodyguards easily, and the lock didn’t take much effort to hack. The dealer put up a fight and managed to kill the other merc, but he was still outmanned and outgunned. When the firing stopped, the dealer was a smoking corpse. A cry came from one of the adjacent rooms, and a tiny child ran out to the body, clutching a stuffed toy._

_“Daddy, what’s wrong? Wake up, Daddy!” The kid turned to the two invaders. “What happened to Daddy?”_

_Without a word or change of expression, Zaeed’s asari employer raised her pistol. He grabbed her arm. “What the fuck are you doing?”_

_She knocked his hand away. “No witnesses.” Bang, bang, bang. Three rounds straight into the kid’s head. Zaeed couldn’t stop watching as the tiny body crumpled. All he could see was Jessie, gasping out her last breaths. The asari stepped over the body, kicking the toy out of the way as she began to rifle through the dealer’s pockets. She stopped when she felt the muzzle of Zaeed’s pistol at the base of her skull._

_"Too fucking far,” he growled, and pulled the trigger._

It was the only job he walked away from without his payment. He had found his line, and he wouldn’t cross it for any amount of credits. But these Cerberus fuckers, they had crossed it a hundred times and never looked back. What had been done to the kids here…Jack was an uncontrolled, destructive little bitch, but not even she deserved that.

The cell door creaked open, allowing the two women to exit. Both had almost unreadable expressions, but there was an unnatural tightness around Shepard’s eyes.

“The bomb is set,” she said. “Let’s get the hell out of here.”

Back on the shuttle, Shepard wordlessly handed the detonator to Jack. The younger woman toyed with it, flipping it around in her fingers as the shuttle set a course back to the _Normandy_. Her restless gaze met Zaeed’s for just a moment before he turned to stare out the window at the jungle below.

“Blow the fucking thing to hell,” he muttered. Jack didn’t respond, but moments later, a ball of orange flame blossomed out of the trees.

It was goddamn beautiful.

 

\----------

 

Zaeed clutched the bottle of scotch in one hand, a glass in the other, and made his way a bit unsteadily towards the observation deck. He was already several drinks in, with the intention of getting royally smashed by the end of the night. He needed it. Zorya had been a fucking nightmare. Shepard had refused to pursue Vido, instead insisting on saving the refinery workers. Jack had supported him, to his enormous surprise, but Shepard wouldn’t listen to them. He’d had to watch his target escape, then gotten nearly crushed by a giant girder. Medi-gel and Dr. Chakwas had fixed the injuries, but the image of Vido flying off in that goddamn gunship was seared into his brain. Shepard and her goddamn conscience had cost him the best chance at his former partner he’d gotten in the past twenty years, and then _she’d_ had the nerve to be angry with _him_? The muscles on the scarred side of his face twitched. All he wanted right now was to get pissed. Hopefully that asari they had picked up wasn’t on the observation deck. Although she was pretty easy on the eyes…

But Samara wasn’t there when the door opened. Instead, Jack was curled up in the corner chair, her legs drawn up to her chest and her arms wrapped around them. So much for that plan. He turned to head back down to the cargo hold.

“Hey.”

He wasn’t in the mood to fight with her, not even to needle her. But the tone of her voice made him pause. It wasn’t combative, just flat and neutral. He turned back. Jack had shifted to the opposite-facing chair, still half-curled into a ball, staring into the void. She jerked her head at the chair she had vacated, not moving her gaze from the stars. He made his way over almost cautiously and settled into the seat, regarding his unexpected companion. Her expression was unreadable, but the set of her shoulders was uncomfortable. Wordlessly, he poured a healthy measure of scotch into the glass he had brought and handed it to Jack. She took it, still not looking at him. He fished around under the table for the glass he’d left there the other day and poured his own drink. He smiled a bit as the burn of the alcohol hit his throat. His carefully planned revenge might be in ruins, but at least he still had booze.

They sat in silence for a long while. Zaeed’s gaze wandered around the room, finding the little changes that had occurred since Samara took up residence. When his eyes fell on Jack again, he was surprised to see she was looking at him. They locked eyes for a moment, then they both looked away and muttered, “Thanks.”

Zaeed snorted. “What are you thanking me for?”

A long second passed before she answered. “You had my back on Pragia. People don’t do shit like that for me. Figured I should return the favor. Sorry it didn’t work out.”

“Vido’s such a goddamn idiot, he’s bound to slip up again soon.” He didn’t really believe it, but it was nice to dream. “And once he does, I’m not making the mistake of telling anyone like the girl scout. I’ll put together my own team to take him out.”

He could have sworn a tiny smile appeared on her face at his use of her nickname for Shepard. “Yeah? Well, call me up when you do. I’d enjoy seeing that bastard burn. No one shoots at me and lives.”

“Amen to that.” He raised his glass in salute, and she tipped hers in return.

After another few minutes of silence, Jack sighed. “I wish I knew how the hell Shepard does it.”

“Does what?”

“All this,” she replied, waving her glass around to indicate the _Normandy_. “There’s no way this whole clown car should work. I mean, a krogan, a turian, and a salarian working together? There are enough criminals that that justicar should be having fits. Instead, I saw her having lunch with Kasumi the other day. Hell, I’m still here, playing nice with fucking Cerberus, because she convinced me to. Somehow she’s got half the crew wanting to fuck her, and the other half look at her like she’s a god or something. Just by talking to them.” She barked a laugh. “If we survive this suicide mission shit, maybe she’ll give lessons. Probably would make it a hell of a lot easier to con people anyways.”

Zaeed settled back in the chair and sipped at his scotch. He’d led people before, with varying degrees of success, but Shepard’s influence on the entire crew was astounding. Most of all on the girl in front of him. A month ago, she had been a snarling, solitary creature who would barely speak two words to her crewmates beyond telling them to fuck off. Now here she was, surrendering her chair to him and actually having a conversation. She was focused, determined, no longer a wild card except in combat. He had noticed the same focus in the rest of the crew. They had morphed from a disparate bunch of goddamn misfits into a team. Shit. Even he was now thinking about everyone’s survival, not just his own. Maybe they really could survive this suicide mission.

“So where’s your money?”

“What?” Jack’s eyes narrowed over her glass.

“You said half the crew wants to fuck her. Where’s your money? Mine’s on Krios. You ever seen the two of them talk? Had some windy chat about the nature of love or some shit over dinner the other day. It’s enough to make a man lose his goddamn appetite.”

Jack laughed again. “Your eyes even work anymore, Massani? If she’s not already fucking Vakarian, she will be.”

“Never would have figured her for that much of a xenophile. At least Krios has got lips and five goddamn fingers.”

“I guess you don’t see them together like I do. Shit, you wanna talk about appetite loss, just watch them for a little while.”

“Care to make it a real wager? Fifty credits?”

“Make it a hundred and you’re on.” Jack stuck out her hand.

Zaeed laughed, and if it didn’t feel goddamn good to have something to really laugh about. He shook her hand. “Deal.”

“Easiest hundred credits I’ve ever made.” She raised her glass slightly. “Thanks for the scotch. It’s good stuff.”

“Hell of a thing to find. Almost had to headbutt a krogan for it the last time I found a bottle.” For some reason, this caused her to burst out laughing.

“Shit, that reminds me of Tuchanka. Shepard actually did headbutt a krogan.”

“Now that’s a story I’ve gotta hear.”

Before Jack could begin, the door hissed open, and Shepard herself stepped in. “Oh. Sorry, I was looking for Samara.”

“She’s not here, but come on in. We were just waxing goddamn nostalgic.”

The commander smiled slightly and indicated the bottle of scotch. “Got enough for me?”

All of a sudden, it hit him. The reason he had listened to her after Vido’s escape. The reason he found himself only a little bit angry now. Hell, probably the reason he was still on this boat. Standing there with one hand on her hip, with her red hair and blue eyes, she looked exactly like Jessie. Shepard was the woman Jessie would have grown into. Fighting against the sudden uncomfortable tightness in his chest, he nodded. “Sure. Gotta find your own glass though.”

She grinned. “I think I can handle that. Back in a minute.”

It was more than a minute, but when she returned, she was followed by Kasumi, Vakarian, and Grunt, each clutching glasses or bottles of their own. Shit. So much for a night of quiet drunkenness. Jack looked like she was about to leave, but then settled back into her chair, her shoulders squared, looking for all the world like a soldier determined to stand her ground. Well, if she could stand the company, so could he. At least there was no sign of Miranda.

As the night wore on and the level of scotch in the bottle dropped, Zaeed found himself drawn more and more into the group. Jack stayed in her chair, occasionally throwing out coarse or blunt comments, especially at Shepard and Vakarian’s expense. Remembering her words, he watched the commander and the turian closely. After a while, he chuckled to himself and wandered back to Jack’s corner. The biotic raised an eyebrow. He sighed, and she gave him a wicked grin.

“Like I said, easiest hundred credits I’ve ever made.”

He brought up his omni-tool and transferred the money to her. “Yeah, well. I’m not real good with people.”

She smirked and poured herself another drink. “Me neither.” They clinked glasses as he sat back down, watching the woman his sister would have become. Shepard had taken eleven people who could not have been more different and forged them into a team. He was even starting to see some of them as goddamn friends. Maybe never Kasumi or Miranda, but Jack…she was alright. They understood one another.

Yeah, all things considered, the _Normandy_ was not a half-bad boat.

**Author's Note:**

> Hope you enjoyed my first fanfic! Comments and suggestions are welcome, especially if I made any errors. I researched as much as I could, but there's just not a whole lot of information on Zaeed's background, even on how old he is (I went with early fifties).


End file.
